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Endless

Thursday, July 6, 2017

Last evening, my younger brother Mark seemed to feel that since he had spent time unconscious in his chair before the T.V. in the living room, he needed to catch up on missed beer consumption.

So instead of heading on up to his bedroom for the night around 10:30 p.m. so he could shave and brush his teeth and whatever else he does before going to bed so that he's not faced with the task before going to work in the morning, he cracked open a can of beer.

I was upstairs preparing my own way for bed, not at all intending to keep him company any longer. If he needed to swill yet more beer, then he could do it by himself.

He confirmed that resolution when ─ in short order ─ he cracked open yet another beer.

I was in bed at 10:44 p.m. without bothering to go downstairs to bid him a good-night.

It's unsettling how the day's heat seems to be held within my bedroom when I get to bed. I won't make the same mistake tonight that I did last night of turning off the ceiling fan that had been running through the evening.

Overnight, I checked the time on at least three occasions between 3:30 a.m. and 5:30 a.m., just to see if it was near enough to my usual 'rise and shine' time.

When I finally checked at 6:01 a.m., it was time ─ sleep was just too elusive.

I found my eldest stepson Tho still readying for work. I now see why he likely did not resort to his mother's availability the last two times she spent the night ─ he thinks nothing of getting her up in the morning to drive his lazy ass to the SkyTrain a mile or so away to save him having to take a bus. A co-worker picked him up this morning.

I don't know if the 22-year-old has ever walked the mile like I always did when I had to take the SkyTrain to get to work.

Far better that he robs his mother of sleep than he face the burden of being man enough to get himself to work.

But that's between them.

His younger brother Poté was just about to get up for work, too, when Tho left; and soon enough, the kid had left to drive himself to his place of employ.

And I was home alone.

I have been working for over 10 days on a post at my hosted website Latin Impressions, so I was not going to pause this morning until it was finished and published.

I just didn't expect that it would take most of the morning to get done: Romance Watch.

That's a whole heck of a lot of work on a post for a website that always has some bare spots in the 28-day retrospective of visitations to the website. But I keep hoping that its visitation record will improve ─ it is by far the poorest performer of my six hosted websites.

I had held off tackling any exercise until that work was done. Unfortunately, it was now late into the morning. The backyard tool shed where I work out was warming up; and I was anxious to start a sunning session on the backyard sundeck.

Thus, I settled on approximate ⅗ of what I would otherwise have put myself through. I'm still weighing rather high ─ 189 pounds instead of my normal adult weight of 183 or 184 pounds at a height of about five feet 10¾ inches.

With the workout done, I didn't want to be sunning on top of a meal, so I postponed eating. My sunning session began at 12:30 p.m., and I called it off at 1:35 p.m.

And then I ate my day's first meal.

For most days this week, I have been topping off my two daily meals with a big bowl of fermented vegetables.

There are probably only about a cupful of actual vegetables in the bowl ─ they just tend to be awash in the fermentation juice, for I use an enormous amount of water whenever I get a batch of vegetables set up for fermentation.

But obviously the now sour juice is itself a rich probiotics source.

I have been consuming so much this week because I am trying to exhaust one of the two containers of fermented vegetables I had prepared last Friday. The other container was put into the fridge two or three days ago, but there is no room for this larger container.

There is always a pronounced white film over the product whenever I look into the room-temperature culture with an eye to dishing myself up a bowlful.

The first time I ever saw that development, I had concerns that a noxious microorganism had overtaken the culture. However, I managed to find an article that claimed that the film was not harmful.

And true enough, everything tastes just as good, and I have had no bowel issues.

Anyway, once I finish eating up what's in that container, I will cut back to just a helping a day, in all likelihood.

I have read some claims that it is indeed possible to get too much fermented food into one's system ─ the organisms in the culture can of themselves be overpowering where the gut microflora is concerned.

And it can lead to problems ─ even skin troubles, as when fermentation yeasts are involved in the vegetable culture.

That's just something I read today. I don't know what the actual truth may be.

I want to post an old photo of my mother Irene Dorosh that I scanned this week. My guess is that it was taken in the late 1960s, or anytime during the decade of the 1970s.

She and her husband Alex visited deep into the U.S. quite a lot, so I cannot securely venture where the location might be:

I knew that some while back, I had posted a similar photo here, so I sought it out:

I guess I can never know precisely where she was when the two photos were snapped.

Have you any concerns about the development of Alzheimer's disease in yourself, or maybe a loved one?

If you do, the following information concerning a study involving genuine extra virgin olive oil should be of special interest:

The American Heart Association are jerks when it comes to understanding a truly sound diet ─ that first report linked to a couple of articles where the AHA condemned coconut oil, but wholeheartedly recommended "corn oil, soybean oil, peanut oil and canola oil."

But as the last report points out very clearly, finding true extra virgin olive oil may not be as simple a matter as most consumers may believe.

And even if a verified brand is purchased, then how much olive oil should a person consume daily to derive the benefits that prevent or turn back Alzheimer's disease?

Let's say that we are only interested in taking the olive oil as a therapeutic supplement ─ how much of it should we be taking?

I could not find that defined anywhere. Even the study didn't seem to project that specific detail. All I noticed was some discussion of what constitutes a healthy Mediterranean diet in the opinion of most observers:

Among the key elements of the Mediterranean diet, an important role has been attributed to daily intake of fresh fruit and vegetable, cereals, beans, and legumes and the usage of EVOO [extra virgin olive oil] as a primary source of fat. In particular, average daily consumption of 30–50 mL per day of EVOO has been suggested as the most important and integral component of the diet resulting in the common idea that EVOO plays a major role in the health benefit of this diet.

I am not all that attune to conversions of millilitres, but I did find one chart that indicated 50 millilitres were just over 10 teaspoons.

Remember, though ─ that wasn't the suggestion for Alzheimer's disease prevention or treatment. It was merely an estimated average daily consumption level bestowing general health benefits as seen in the Mediterranean diet.

Now moving along to a different topic, I am now at an age where I realize that I need to be more cautious than I seem to find myself doing when I use the stairs in this house.

Too often I have come close to suffering a misstep.

But even though I am 67, I feel too 'manly' to care to be bothering holding onto a railing for absolutely no reason. How does one overcome such a mindset?

Having an experience in which I find myself silently saying, "Oh, that was close," has not translated into proper precaution. I keep believing that it was an aberration, and to just pay better attention when I use the stairs.

Hmm...if it's a "fall to the death," then does that not mean there is no hope of surviving it?

Here is where I close out for today ─ a journal entry of mine from 41 years ago when I was 26 years old, and living in a basement housekeeping unit in New Westminster.

I was renting in a private home located on Ninth Street, and about two houses up from Third Avenue.

I think I had completed just over a month of full-time employment on a three-month contract with a New Westminster charitable organization called S.A.N.E. (Self Aid Never Ends) that is today known as Fraserside Community Services Society.

The building that housed S.A.N.E. in those earliest years no longer exists, but it was located right around where the New Westminster SkyTrain Station now spreads forth onto Carnarvon Street.

Prior to this full-time employment with them as a swamper on their blue pick-up truck, I had worked part-time off and on since probably back to 1974.

Generally, that truck was driven by Esther St. Jean, a grand lady in her early 40s.

TUESDAY, July 6, 1976

Though I got out of bed at 7:00 a.m., I don't feel well-slept.

That imposition upstairs came down to do her rotten laundry at 8:45 a.m., effectively keeping me from the toilet and my refrigerated lunch. Still, I am not going to be much later than usual this overcast day.

And throughout it I did scant.

The sun came out in the late afternoon.

And Georgina showed up. But beyond acknowledging I recognized I didn't have the confidence to make any contact.

For transporting a quantity of empties (Mike was still driving today), Took gave us each a beer.

I'm leaving for mom's just short of 6:30 p.m.

No one seemed to be there when I arrived (mom is again working with Kay, so she'll be consistently late), so I went to the back and consumed raspberries and strawberries till Alex appeared 15 - 20 minutes later.

When mom got home she gave me Bill[sic]& my West Indies Hospital Sweepstakes ticket receipts. I had a carbohydrate snack.

Bed about 11:20 p.m.

There was a female tenant living upstairs where the woman who owned the house lived ─ I never understood just what the situation up there was, not having ever been upstairs to see things for myself.

Maybe the female was a relative of the landlady?

Whatever the case, this gal got to use the laundry facilities in the basement, but I had to use a laundromat.

Unfortunately for me, my fridge ─ and also my toilet and shower, which shared a cramped little cubicle ─ were outside of my room and in the basement proper.

Anytime the landlady or that tenant were in the basement, I never cared to come forth from my room to have the unwanted social exposure.

But it was exceptionally consterning if I was already using the toilet or shower when someone came downstairs to inhabit the basement for any length of time. I just detested being trapped like that.

Also, if I was showering and the laundry facilities were started up, my shower would stop dead.

Georgina Junglass ─ what a beauty she was! She and I had almost become involved a year or more earlier ─ she did everything but rape me in the S.A.N.E. storage area where we kept all of the furniture and other mainstay items; but I was too craven to let myself go, exhilarating as her forced kissing was ─ she pushed me right down onto a couch and temporarily overpowered me.

I have always regretted my cowardliness.

I don't recall Mike Fleming, but he was temporarily driving the truck ─ Esther was absent. "Took" was another employee in my situation ─ an Indigenous Canadian who was at least into his 30s. It was nice of him to present us with a beer each for hauling his empties so that he could get the deposit for them, but I would have preferred that he just pay me back the $20 he owed me.

Early that evening, I undertook the long hike ─ 1½ hours ─ to get out to the home of my mother, who was then resident in the Kennedy Heights area of Surrey. Her home was my main mailing address.

That little house was torn down some years ago, but its address used to be 12106 - 90th Avenue.

I would have had my visit, and then hiked all the way back to my room in New Westminster later that evening.

My mother was an evening office janitress in partnership with her friend Kay Kris or Krys.

There were more than just raspberries and strawberries in the backyard ─ my mother and Alex also had some blueberry bushes, lots of vegetables, and cherry, pear, plum, and apples trees. They even had a peach tree.

Lottery tickets had to be bought on consignment from someone a person knew who was serving as an agent; or via mail-order from some organization trying to make money via fund-raising. There was no such thing as tickets available in just about any store, nor were there any lottery booths anywhere.

As for Georgina, last year I came across some information that indicated that she had died of cancer or something in early 2013. I think that I last saw her sometime in the decade of the 1980s.